


the thing that starts and gets worse before ending

by pastelfalcon



Series: Starry Eyed Verse [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Foursome, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 08:24:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2102427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelfalcon/pseuds/pastelfalcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That night, Sam dreams of getting hit by a car and not being all that upset about it when Jane scrambles out from behind the wheel to apologize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the thing that starts and gets worse before ending

It starts at a small get together at Stark tower.

Sam needs more than one glass of wine to deal with sharing a room with Tony Stark for more than the usual two hour timeslot it takes to save the world, so he abandons Steve to the mercy of his fellow Avengers and heads to the unmanned bar on the other side of the lobby-sized room.

Jane Foster – a pint-sized astrophysicist with all the curiosity of a cat and twice the tenacity – is resolutely perched at on one of the stools, drinking more the alcohol anyone with her short stature should be permitted.

Sam laughs as soon as he sees her assembly of bottles and borrows two to pour himself a drink. “Aren’t you Thor’s designated driver?” he teases, leaning back against the bar.

Jane narrows her eyes at him speculatively and then smiles, red in the face. “Uh, no. We um – we fly _everywhere_ when he’s here, to be honest. Thor _likes_ flying, and,” she pauses to take a drink, “I tend to run people over when I drive. Messing up my hair is the lesser evil.”

Sam laughs again until he notices she seems mostly serious. “Oh, okay,” he says, watching her dubiously.

They talk about work stuff, as people will do when awkwardly trying to make conversation. Jane talks about creating a controlled bridge between worlds, and Sam talks about how heavy Captain America is when he jumps from really tall things. Jane admits to playing hooky a lot when Thor is on one of his extended visits and Sam admits to doing the deed with Steve while on a mission more than once.

Thor loudly demands that Steve arm wrestle with him after Steve finishes a story about growing up near the navy yard in Brooklyn. Sam pours himself drink number six-- _seven_. 

“That’s a whole lotta muscled enthusiasm you gotta manage,” Sam says solemnly to Jane, gesturing with his glass. Thor is laughing delightedly and sweeping everything off the coffee table to the objection of no one but Dummy. Natasha pats the bot consolingly.

Jane’s drunk smile is shmoopy with fondness for Thor. “Well,” she says, pulling herself into a proper sitting position, blinking her surroundings back into focus, “That is a lot of patriotic zeal _you_ have to manage.”

“He’s not that bad,” Sam insists with a chuckle. They both watch Steve’s ass in his jeans as the super soldier bends over to better situate his arm for Thor’s grasp, the top of his underwear visible over the beltless waistband. Jane nudges his arm. “Yeah, okay, he’s got American flag boxers,” Sam relents, rolling his eyes, “But those were a gift. And what are you looking for, anyway?” he adds with an arched eyebrow.

Jane downs her drink and smacks the glass down on the bar. “I,” she says proudly, “have eyes.”

“Yeah, and they’re all cross-eyed,” says Sam, laughing as he takes away the bottle she picks up. He ignores her grabby hands and sets it aside. “I’m cutting you off, Doc.”

Jane blows a stand of hair out of her flushed face. “Probably a good call,” she agrees seriously, wiping at her slightly damp nose with the sleeve of her sweater. “Here I am making a new friend – which I am notoriously _bad at doing_ , mind you – and I’m ogling his boyfriend’s assets right in front of him.”

“Be my guest,” Sam tells her generously, leaning back on his elbow again, “There’s a whole lot to ogle.”

“You can look at Thor, if you want,” Jane says chivalrously, “He _loves_ the attention. He acts like it’s all _free love_ on Asgard but I think he just really wants to sleep with everyone here.”

“Does he now,” Sam says thoughtfully, licking his lips before breaking into a slow, flirtatious smirk. He directs the look towards Jane’s smugly amused grin, their eyebrows raising at one another with obvious intent.

They crack up at the same time, Jane’s snorted giggles and Sam’s open laughter tangling together between them as they drunkenly paw at each other’s arms.

“Okay, okay,” pants Sam, rubbing his own cheeks to bring the grinning down a notch, “We are _too damn drunk_ to talk anymore. I’m cutting us off from conversation, too.”

“What are we gonna do if we can’t drink or talk?” asks Jane with mock concern, her eyes wide and her hand still on his muscled upper arm.

She intends it as a joke but Sam looks at her for a few seconds too long for it to play off naturally, and their subsequent laughter is a little stiff.

They go back to talking about work stuff.

That night, Sam dreams of getting hit by a car and not being all that upset about it when Jane scrambles out from behind the wheel to apologize.

\- - -

It gets worse when the Avengers help apprehend some rogue HYDRA agents and Jane punches Grant Ward in the face. Apparently she’s friends with a couple of SHIELD scientists and had heard about his tendency to throw them to their deaths over open ocean. Sam, who had been the one restraining said agent, had practically been staring with heart-shaped eyes.

\- - -

It gets even _worse_ when Sam and Thor take to the skies to take out some of the rapidly accumulating space cruisers that come – with lasers blasting – as part of yet another alien invasion on New York. Sam is woefully underequipped to handle their level of fire power, but he goes for it anyway, because that’s what heroes do.

Then Thor breaks the sky open with splinters of white light fury, and Sam finds himself too busy avoiding getting his ass cooked by friendly fire to worry too much about the goddamn green men.

“Alright, man,” Sam shouts against the thunderous din, annoyance contorting his goggles-clad features, “You’re the God of Thunder, we got it!”

Thor’s laughter is wild and loud, blonde hair whipping in his face as he takes out a ship with a single swing of his hammer. Sam banks sharply to avoid the tumble of crumpled metal debris. “I am sorry, my winged friend!” Thor says, sounding only about one percent apologetic and a hundred and forty-nine percent pleased with his crazy self. “But I would not be so foolish as to doubt your skill in the skies; I knew you would not require warning!”

Which doesn’t really address the fact that Sam clearly would have liked one, but.

“God of Thunder thinks _I’m_ a _badass_ ,” he mumbles to himself musingly, “No big.”

Sam evades a laser, flipping over to shoot out a canon on the belly of one of the ships. He sweeps high on the burst of heat from another Thor-exploded ship, wings stretched out wide. “Fair enough,” he shouts back, feeling pretty damn cocky as he sweeps silk-smooth between snarls of lightening.

“I am proud to share the skies with you, Son of Wil,” Thor says solemnly when they fly close, Thor reaching out to pet his palm over Sam’s wing as though he expects Sam to feel his touch. “Your humor and patience are much appreciated on dark days such as these.”

“So’s your lightshow,” jokes Sam as he surges forward, tilting to tag Thor with the tip of his wing as he opens fire on another ship. “Almost better than a concert!”

\- - -

It gets even _more_ worse when Sam comes home to find Jane in his living room in the middle of an enthusiastic explanation of something space-related. Steve is perched in an armchair across from her, blatantly sketching the _Brave_ -level tangle of her just-got-done-sciencing hair in one of his well-loved pads.

“Oh,” says Jane when she notices him, pausing and awkwardly sitting back down on the couch.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Sam insists as he trots into the kitchen to grab himself a glass of oj, pretending he always drinks it thusly and not straight out of the bottle like the eternal bachelor he is. Steve is a big fan of his spit anyhow so he’s never shaken the habit.

Jane goes back to talking, and Sam wanders into the living room to sit on the other side of the couch.

“But it’s just a theory,” Jane finishes, fiddling with the hem of a plaid button-down Sam has a sneaking suspicion actually belongs to Thor. What with it fitting like a blanket and all. “A very _well-regarded_ theory,” she adds somewhat defensively.

“And Stark won’t fund it,” says Steve dubiously.

“Right,” says Jane, “Because it would require a lot of the same science Eric utilized in the, um, Manhattan… thing.”

“The portal opening that unleashed hoards of aliens in mechanical whales on the city,” Steve confirms. He looks up from his mostly completed sketch and frowns.

“But that’s just the thing!” Jane says loudly, gesturing with her hands, “What Loki made Eric do was _horrible_ and _evil_ , but the science itself _isn’t_. Science _can’t_ be evil, it’s _science_. And what Eric did, _science-wise_ , was _brilliant_. Unprecedented. It could bridge earth with other realms, open up communication, commerce –”

“But Loki’s staff was the centerpiece,” Steve points out, “Wouldn’t you need that to replicate his portal?”

“Um,” says Jane. “Probably. Yes, most definitely.”

Steve’s smile is bitter without being resentful. “You don’t need funding,” he says shrewdly, “You need the staff. And everybody else said no.”

Jane palms her knees and attempts to look cute. Sam thinks she’s doing a pretty good job. “Natasha didn’t even bother _verbalizing_ her no,” she notes, biting her lip. “She just sort of… stared. Menacingly.”

“Look, Doctor Foster, I’d love to help you,” Steve starts out politely, but Jane cuts him off with a frustrated whine and a little kick to the leg of the coffee table.

“You people!” she seethes, only half-angry, throwing herself back against the couch and folding her arms. Her hair is all over the place. “You’re supposed to be the nice one,” she adds petulantly.

Sam grins at her and turns to waggle his eyebrows at Steve. “Whoever told you that sold you some _bad intel_ , Jane,” he says, almost tripping himself out of his smile when he realizes he’s casually using her first name. “Steve’s smile is _all theatre_.”

“Bruce is the nice one, usually,” says Steve.

Jane huffs lightly. “ _He_ said ‘are you fucking crazy’.”

“The nice one _usually_ ,” Steve repeats.

\- - -

The worse hits its all-time worst when Sam finds himself tipsy again at Christmas time, a whole four months after his first intimate conversation with Jane Foster. Everyone is wearing Santa hats except Natasha and Antoine, who decided to wear an elf hat and reindeer antlers respectively.

Thor is dressed in a full Santa getup, the kind Sam hasn’t seen since he’d hit up a strip club during the holidays on leave: tight red pants with white trimming and black suspenders drawn up over an otherwise naked chest. Jane, like Sam, is also tipsy, and keeps pawing at his chest and giggling like she’s never noticed how crazy ripped the guy is.

Sam licks his lips, nurses his drink, and notices Steve is staring with about the same level of blood in his face as Jane. (The rest of his blood – well, Sam’s something of a scientist himself, because he drops his hand under the table to check his hypothesis and _oh yeah_ , he’s right on the money.)

Which is how he ends up feeling up his boyfriend at the Avengers-slash-baby!SHIELD Christmas party while they both stare at Thor chugging spiked eggnog and hoisting Jane up on his shoulders to spin her around until she laughingly shouts at him to stop.

Steve doesn’t stop him until Sam’s starting to undo his belt, at which point Steve drags him into a supply closet instead. Sam has had sex in many Stark Tower supply closets, but this one is his favorite, because it doesn’t have any vents in it and they’ve potentially scarred Bucky enough over his tendency to perch in them unseen.

Natasha and Antoine are outside the closet waiting use it when Sam and Steve finally emerge.

\- - -

On New Years, Sam has had enough, so it ends.

It ends with Sam shooting Jane an e-mail and then answering her subsequent phone call.

It ends with a crack of thunder outside just as the sky is going dark, startling Steve out of his old man nap on the couch, charcoal from his latest drawing smeared on his hands and subsequently his face.

It ends with Thor striding into their home with an oddly pensive expression and a nod of greeting to Sam and then Steve, before calmly discussing the terms of their exchange.

It ends with Jane’s bashfully lowered eyes lifting to meet Sam’s relaxed smile, followed by her hands gripping his shirt and her tongue in his mouth and Steve’s hand on the small of his back as he eases in close to watch.

It ends with Jane whispering, “Oh, _yes_ ,” against his mouth and Thor sweeping her and Sam _both_ into his arms and trotting off to the bedroom.

It ends with Steve stripping his shirt off and kicking the door shut behind them.

It ends, but it’s just the beginning.


End file.
